


the beauty of grace

by McEnchilada



Category: Father Brown (2013)
Genre: Attempted Seduction, Catholic Guilt, Dubiously Consensual Groping, M/M, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-29 18:23:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14478540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McEnchilada/pseuds/McEnchilada
Summary: Father Brown goes to the church late at night in order to be alone with his thoughts. Flambeau finds him there.set after s2e5, "The Mysteries of the Rosary"





	the beauty of grace

There was no real reason for Father Brown to go to the church; he could speak to God just as well from the presbytery. But he loved the silence of St. Mary’s late at night, when all of Kembleford was asleep and the moonlight turned everything to shades of silver. He could be alone with his thoughts and his Lord, away from the thousand intrusions of daily life. He treasured the solitude and the peace it permitted him, as uneventful as was the life of a parish priest in between murders. He found himself in the church several nights a week, kneeling before the altar rail, letting his mind wander heavenwards.

It was absurd that a man as tall and well-built should be able to move so silently, but nevertheless, Flambeau made no sound until he suddenly appeared out of the shadows like a spectre. Father Brown almost swallowed his tongue. Flambeau’s features were cast into keen contrasts of pale light and deep shadow that sharpened his cheekbones and shaded his eyes completely beneath his heavy brow. He prowled out from the direction of the vestry with the dangerous elegance of a great cat, his footsteps echoing as they hadn’t a moment before.

Father Brown rose, somewhat stiffly, to greet him. “Flambeau.”

“Father Brown,” Flambeau returned, as civilly as if they were meeting on the village green at noon, and not in the church at midnight. He didn’t offer his hand to shake, and neither did the priest. Ordinary niceties seemed silly when speaking to a man whom Father Brown had yet to encounter without shots being fired by someone.

“What brings you back to Kembleford?” The rosary had been spirited away weeks ago, and he didn’t know of any other priceless relics stashed about the place. If Flambeau was on the trail of something new, surely his preference would be to avoid Father Brown, whose interference could be counted on. There couldn’t be anything in this small, sleepy village to tempt the greatest thief in Europe, much less in this small, sleepy church.

Flambeau smiled faintly, but didn’t answer. Producing a silver cigarette case, he retreated a few steps to lean against the wall and light an insouciant cigarette. Father Brown watched him take several long drags, the glowing orange tip of the cigarette the only color in a world washed grey. “It was the monsignor?” Flambeau asked at length, as white smoke gradually dissipated around him.

Father Brown’s heart clenched in a way that had grown familiar, every time he thought of his old friend. “Yes. Poor Ignatius.” How terrible were the things men were driven to by despair.

Flambeau evidently disagreed; he sneered around his cigarette. “He kidnapped your friend Ambrose, and his boy would have killed you and me both. For a trinket.”

“A trinket you wanted yourself,” Brown pointed out. He came closer, the better to converse, though the echo in the church made it really unnecessary. Closer, he could feel the weight of Flambeau’s assessing gaze always on him, always measuring by a metric unknown. Father Brown wondered if he was wanting, and wondered if he was worse for it.

“I was after the rosary as a matter of professional pride,” said Flambeau. “Not to mention its intrinsic value. At least I have the decency not to feign goodness. Ignatius was looking for his own glory, while masquerading his greed as zeal.”

“He was a sick man, seeking healing!” Father Brown strode forward a step before he caught himself. He stopped and closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose where his glasses rested. Flambeau’s cynicism was meant to incite, but he didn’t have to be drawn in. “The path he chose was wrong. But he was dying, and afraid. He wanted the comfort of God’s love, to be able to die with grace.” Poor, poor Ignatius. To lose sight of true faith, when he’d needed it most. “He wanted to have proof of a purpose. There are far greater sins.”

“Like hypocrisy?” His voice dripped with disdain. “A priest proclaiming himself the hand of God while he betrays every sermon he’s taught?”

“I’m not pardoning him—”

“The boys in his care. You think he was kind to them? Treated them like the sons he never had?”

How, or why, Flambeau knew about the boys, Father Brown couldn’t guess. He wanted to protest that Ignatius _had_ been kind, had given them a home and a good life when they’d otherwise have had neither, but…he remembered the scornful way Ignatius had spoken about Daniel. The boy had been sent to prison for doing as Ignatius had told him, and yet, “He’s always disappointing me.” He remembered how brokenly Daniel had lamented, “I’ve failed him.” Daniel had been out of St. Bartholomew’s for years before Ignatius’s cancer, and whatever excuse for his behavior that might generously provide. Perhaps Ignatius had never been the man they’d believed him to be.

Flambeau took his silence for the uneasy assent it was, and smirked triumphantly. “How many more like him? How many self-righteous preachers in their pulpits hiding worse sins than any in their congregations? Your entire church is a cancer. What can salvation be worth when the men who offer it are worse than the men they claim need it? If heaven is home to corruption like this, I’ll thank God that I’m not getting in. Better to spend eternity with the honest sinners than the ones who pretend holiness.”

Indignation tasted very much like rage when Father Brown retorted, “But how many who are truly selfless, truly generous, truly _good_ , who serve God out of love for His children? How _dare_ you accuse us all!”

His anger was Flambeau’s victory, he knew. The insufferable man dropped the end of his cigarette to smolder out on the flagstones (Mrs. McCarthy would be furious) and stalked towards him. “Is that the best you can do? Shield the wicked by invoking the worthy?” He took another step closer, urging Father Brown a step back. “You’ll defend the evils of some thanks to the so-called virtues of others?” Another step forward, another step back. Father Brown’s back was to the wall, Flambeau’s icy eyes boring into him righteously. “You’d dare speak to me of repentance, when the best you can do is hide your sins behind your bible?”

“I have _never_ ,” Father Brown said, breathing hard with the intensity of his emotion, “professed to be perfect. I have sinned, like any man, but you are not my judge.”

There was a shift in Flambeau’s expression; his sneer twisted into a mocking, knowing smile. “Yes, you have, haven’t you? And I know how.”

Father Brown’s heart leapt as Flambeau, smirking and cruel, raised his hand to stroke his fingertips across his cheek. His heart stuttered when the featherlight touch stopped on his lips.

In a voice as low as thunder, Flambeau whispered, “I’ve seen how you watch me.” 

Father Brown’s head shook in mute, desperate, vain denial. Flambeau’s hand fell to his throat, so that it rested over the frantic beating of his pulse. 

“You imagine touching me. Caress me with your eyes. Lecherous. Lustful.”

“No,” the priest protested weakly. His body, betraying him, trembled with want when Flambeau took his hand away, and stiffened with anticipation when both his hands pressed against his chest and one of Flambeau’s feet smoothly nudged his apart. He couldn’t breathe.

“Yes,” countered Flambeau, against that utterly insufficient argument. “And what a sin, from the immaculate priest, so gracious in his pardons. How does it go? ‘Everyone who looks at a man with lust for him in his heart’? Shall we examine your heart?”

Before Father Brown could voice any response, any protest, Flambeau surged forward. His leg was shoved between Brown’s and thrust upwards, almost enough to force him on tiptoe. Almost painful, but the proximity to pleasure was worse than that. Flambeau’s hips were flush with his, his hands gripping his shoulders. His voice, so close, so rough and insistent, filled Father Brown’s entire world when he demanded, “This, Father? Will you pretend not to have thought of _this_?”

Father Brown swallowed hard, more off-guard than he’d ever been in his life. A confusion of instincts overwhelmed him. He wanted to push Flambeau away; he wanted him even closer. He was consumed by the desire to know, to feel; he was repulsed by Flambeau’s forcefulness, by the hardness in his eyes. He’d imagined…but he couldn’t permit it, not this. His hands wanted, impulsively, to go to Flambeau’s arms, to hold on. Instead, he pressed them against the wall behind him, until his fingers shook with strain.

“No.” His voice was hoarse but nonetheless echoed all around them in the empty church. “Not like this,” he admitted. In this, at least, he could be honest, though his honesty could only become a weapon for Flambeau to use against him. The laugh he received in response was taunting.

He closed his eyes, though it made no difference. Sight was, if anything, the least troubling of his senses at the moment, when he could feel Flambeau’s hands spread flat and forceful against his chest, and smell Flambeau’s sweat on his neck. It was too much, far too much, a flood of sensations he hadn’t even come close to since he was a mere boy in the trenches, living in the shadow of death. He felt like he’d returned there now, adrenaline overwhelming him along with the terrible fear of his defenses being stripped from him. 

“How did you picture it?” Flambeau asked, breath hot against his ear. His hands sent a shiver down Brown’s spine as they skimmed down his sides, trailing heat. He was held to the wall by Flambeau’s hips, and by his own weakness of will. God help him, he was weak.

“Do I come to you as a penitent sinner?” His beard scratched Father Brown’s jaw. His lips brushed against his cheek in a mockery of a kiss. “Repentant? Pitiful?” Strong, certain hands fell to his hips. Fingers gripped bruisingly, mercifully stalling the traitorous shifting of Brown’s hips. “A supplicant seeking absolution?” He hitched his leg up higher, suddenly, startling a gasp from the priest at the friction against his cock through his clothing. Then with leonine grace, he sank to his knees before Brown. 

His eyes snapped open, meeting Flambeau’s. Now it was only that cold, sardonic blue gaze that kept him pinned.

“Do I beg you,” Flambeau murmured, in a voice suddenly grown impossibly soft, “on my knees, for forgiveness?”

Father Brown’s heart pounded in his ears, even louder when Flambeau skimmed his thumb in an arc across his hipbone. There was no denying the effect produced by Flambeau kneeling before him, looking at him so intensely. Those eyes had haunted his dreams, inescapable and unappeasable. The thief’s judgement of him was correct, if unjust. Brown had dreamed, had wished, had longed for, but not simply out of lust. Lust was crude and petty, a weakness of the flesh. Brown wanted so much more from him than that. He was a naïve fool, he knew, but he knew as well that there was so much goodness within Flambeau, if he would only be allowed to discover it.

He remembered when Flambeau had come to St. Mary’s, after he’d stolen the cross. The challenge in his voice when he dared Father Brown to absolve him. He’d hoped to prove—what? That all that Brown wanted was to be able to add his to a tally of souls saved, to be able to make a show of forgiveness without making any demands of atonement. Or perhaps he’d wanted to be told that he was beyond saving, like a boy so used to beatings that he has ceased to trust kindness. He’d been proud, defiant, and so certain of his condemnation. If only he would let him, there was so much love that Father Brown could show him. God’s love, and…his own.

Resolutely, he raised his chin, tearing his eyes away from the unbearable image before him. This was never what he had imagined. “I am not the one to ask for forgiveness.” His voice was strained, but almost steady.

Flambeau laughed again, louder and wilder. “And will your god forgive this?” he asked, leaning forward to rub his cheek against the bulge beneath Brown’s cassock. Brown nearly yelped.

“Don’t—” He gripped Flambeau’s shoulder, trying to push him away, but the thief was immovable.

“Will He forgive this?” He cupped Brown’s cock, massaging until Brown choked on a groan. “Tell me your god will forgive me,” Flambeau demanded. His voice was hard and spiteful. His touch was punishing, barely shy of cruel. His mouth was curled in a contemptuous sneer as he watched Father Brown losing his fight for composure. “Well?”

Perhaps it was only what he hoped to see. Perhaps he had convinced himself too well that he understood Flambeau, could guess the pain he buried deep in his heart. He was probably a fool to imagine it. But when Flambeau commanded, again, “Tell me that God will forgive me,” Father Brown heard it as a plea. He heard desperation.

His descent to the floor was far less graceful than Flambeau’s had been; every one of his joints protested egregiously. There was very little room between the wall and where Flambeau knelt, so they were nearly chest to chest, their faces scant inches apart. Flambeau’s surprised confusion was evident, and increased when Brown gently, tenderly cupped his face in his hands. It was surprise that held him still, kept him from retreating despite their sudden nearness. 

With all the certainty he’d ever felt, all the conviction he poured into his prayers, Father Brown promised, “God _will_ forgive you, Hercule.”

Flambeau stared at him. His face was open and guileless as Father Brown had never seen it, as vulnerable and terrified as a boy on his first battlefield. Brown held him, and watched him, and the strength of his surety never wavered.

And then Flambeau was gone, a shadow fading into fleeing footsteps and a door slamming shut. Father Brown was left alone in the moonlight of St. Mary’s, his knees aching from the flagstones. Dust motes danced in the drafts. Come morning, they’d blaze like gold in the sunbeams shining through the stained glass, but in the cold, weak light of the moon they drifted like ashes from a fire burning too hot to survive long.

In the silence, Father Brown wept.

**Author's Note:**

> ...and then eventually Flambeau sorts his shit out, learns to let himself be loved, and retires to Kembleford to make a nuisance of himself.
> 
> Title is from "Be My Escape" by Relient K because, listen, if I had any shame I wouldn't have written this fic to begin with.
> 
> The verse that Flambeau (mis)quotes is Matthew 5:28, "But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart."


End file.
